Too may people are worrying about whether or not an officers "qualifies"...they should be worried about whether or not they live through a gun fight without also injuring a innocent party...
And how do you assess an officer's ability to do that without a standard to meet in a qualification?
And remember that whatever solution is proposed has to actually be viable for a LE agency in 2015. Any solution is going to have to be defensible in the litigious world LE agencies work in.
What I am saying is the quals need to be changed to reflect reality, not target shooting. Many of the course of fire are still based on the Police PPC, which is anything but "Practical".
First thing to change is the targets. CokeBottles don't shoot at people. BGs don't look like HUGE BLACK B27 targets with scoring rings.
As to the specifics of the new qualification course, I think every agency needs to figure out what their officers are most likely to get into and base the distances involved into the course of fire. If an agency has had 20 gunfights in its history and every one has been at close range, 10 yards and under, there is no possible reason to have over half the course of fire 15 yards and beyond. The last agency I worked for had to modify its course of fire per Police Standards and Training mandate that 15 of their 36 round course of fire was at 15+ yards. So many people failed the new course of fire they had to drop the passing score to the state minimum vs. their higher than minimum standard on their old course of fire.
As to being sued...you can be sued for anything.
"But that's not an apples to apples comparison. To say Officer#1 hit with 50% of his shots from a .44magnum and Officer#2 hit with 50% of his shots from a 9mm......DOES NOT mean that those officers would have each had 50% hits with a different gun.
Officer#1 may have hit with 80% of his shots if he had switched to a 9mm and Officer#2 may have hit with 20% of his shots if he switched to a .44magnum."
But you don't know that do you... You can say that the 9mm shooter had lower qualification scores when using the .44 or the .44 shooter had higher scores, but until both of them get into a real world shooting over a period of time no one knows. That is why I asked my original question about REAL WORLD shootings involving Glock 9mms and .40s. Those numbers are out there...no one wants to see them however.
Bob
If you can not deal with reality, reality will deal with you....
